Drawing upon the case of the British historian which reviewed anonymously the books of his academic rivals on Amazon, Michael Skapinker suggests in his latest Financial Times column that we should get rid of anonymity on the web.
The internet is an open forum; people can do what they like on their own bits of it. But reputable websites should start insisting people use their names. People may use false ones, of course, but the message will be clear: if you want to speak, please tell us who you are. [...] Demand that people use their names and I suspect both the quality of internet argument and level of civility would rise. In many cases, using pseudonyms online has become a habit rather than a necessity.
Outlets such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Huffington Post are reportedly reconsidering their comment policies along similar lines. This sounds a bit hypocritical. For one thing, virtually all comment systems require at least a working email address and track commentators’ IP addresses. Secondly, users might just provide fake names, and websites couldn’t realistically afford to check the identities of their visitors. Finally, reputation on the internet is most often attached to pseudonyms rather than to real names.
It’s obviously up to individual websites to find the comment policies that best suit their needs. However, then comes a relevant political question: should we ban anonymity on the internet once and for all? This is a very different issue–although not a new one. Lawmakers all over the world have been trying to criminalize anonymous access to the internet. In fact, this is both undesirable and unfeasible. Universal identifiability would imply overcoming huge technical problems through a deep redesign of the internet as we know it. Even if it were achievable, it would be a major wound to free speech rights that are generally respected in real life and should get recognized online as well.
Attempts to banish anonymity from the Internet won’t affect those savvy enough to bypass it, would cost billions, and would have only a negligible effect on security. What such attempts would do is affect the average user’s access to free speech, including those who use the Internet’s anonymity to survive.
Every week we bring you in-depth interviews with leading thinkers and entrepreneurs from the world of technology. The most recent episode features 